“That looks like me,” she said.
It was one of a pair of good photographs I possessed.
“Yes,” I remarked, “that is why I prize it.”
She did not seem to hear me; she was absorbed in gazing at the exquisite face before her. “That is a winning face,” I heard her say. “Sweeter than mine. I wonder if she would ever hesitate between love and money. I do not believe she would,” her own countenance growing gloomy and sad as she said so; “she would think only of the happiness she would confer; she is not hard like me. Eleanore herself would love this girl.”
I think she had forgotten my presence, for at the mention of her cousin’s name she turned quickly round with a half suspicious look, saying lightly:
“My dear old Mamma Hubbard looks horrified. She did not know she had such a very unromantic little wretch for a listener, when she was telling all those wonderful stories of Love slaying dragons, and living in caves, and walking over burning ploughshares as if they were tufts of spring grass?”
“No,” I said, taking her with an irresistible impulse of admiring affection into my arms; “but if I had, it would have made no difference. I should still have talked about love, and of all it can do to make this weary workaday world sweet and delightful.”
“Would you? Then you do not think me such a wretch?”
What could I say? I thought her the winsomest being in the world, and frankly told her so. Instantly she brightened into her very gayest self. Not that I thought then, much less do I think now, she partially cared for my good opinion; but her nature demanded admiration, and unconsciously blossomed under it, as a flower under the sunshine.
“And you will still let me come and tell you how bad I am,—that is, if I go on being bad, as I doubtless shall to the end of the chapter? You will not turn me off?”